The relationship between the elected officials and the appointed public administrators is a two tire connection. There is the social out of work relationship and this is very cordial and full of friendship and personal preferences. Before being appointed to the position of Director of the Permit and Inspection Services Department (PISD) of Orsan, Sam Santos had known Councilman Harrison.
Despite the fact that Harrison had known Santos officially the relationship had become a lot less informal and this made him welcome Santos appointment as he remembered his problem solving capabilities. In as much the relationship between Santos and most of the council members was on the path of duty, they would take some time to meet on common grounds just as friends and with no official dialogue going on.
As the case study rolls to a conclusion, the phone in Santos rings and it is Harrison calling for Santos, he is being invited out for a drink and this is a proof of the very cordial less formal relationship that must have existed even before the council gearings.
The other part of this relationship is in the official spheres. Each person is on his or her self and they all work in unison for the general good of the country. Officially, there are accountability requirements with the elected officials bearing greater accountability to their electorates and the appointed administrators bearing much of the allegiance to the offices into which they are elected. To exercise their accountability to their electorates, the elected administrators look into the progress made by public corporations and fast track the accountability process. As a matter of fact the elected officials are the ones mandated with the appointment of these administrators.
In the case study a number of themes come to the fore so clearly through these two levels of the relationships that exist between these two categories of people. The first that is very open is the bureaucracies that subsist in government institutions. The fact that the elected officials owe their electorate lots of accountability results in the numerous checks and balances that govern the operations of the institutions.
For a developer to have his house or construction inspected and given the go a head to expand another room or a bathroom, he or she would be taken through a heinous process that would take months before being granted the safety permission to proceed with the upgrade or construction. There is a proposed construction of a school in the slopes that are also the wetlands, the bureaucracies that surround the issuance of permits and proofs for the construction to begin has taken long enough to get council woman Gregory worried as her election was pegged on the school (Brock, 2004).
Administration and politics dichotomy is yet another theme; there is a very wide division between politics and administration. In administration there is the element of accountability that unfortunately is checked by politicians while in politics all that exists is the promise of accountability to the electorate. Politicians are elected into office while administrators are appointed and this marks the first division.
While appointing the administrators, there is the likelihood of past preferences influencing the choice of the appointee, Councilman Harrison had known Santos from earlier and this led to him not asking more questions during his hiring process. For politicians the scripts is different, they struggle to prove their competence to the electorate by making their histories clear of any derogatory allegations and the process of them doing this they often black mail and sacrifice others. Santos is such a sacrificial lamb ( Kellner, 2010).
He had worked in the same office together with most of these members of the council and they all understood the complexities that the job came with. The fees for service that Santos effected on his appointment into office was agreed to by all of them, particularly, council man Harrison was well aware of the introduction of this system that they all thought would result in more income to the department. The underlying bureaucracies that Santos had not considered made this process encounter lots of obstacles. Home owners, developers and public jurisdictions encountered delays and confusion with every contact to the Permit and Inspection Department (Brock, 2004).
This resulted in low revenue remittance as the system of fees for service would only generate fees for every single service rendered yet there they were rendering the least of their services a month. Furthermore the service also offered another possibility for the hopeful politicians who traversed the state calling for the reduction in the fees that the department charged for its services to the populace. Eventually when all their concerted effort resulted in a loss of more than five million dollars the one person that they are all putting on the spot is the director one Mr. Sam Santos. This is an act of betrayal, there was a problem but they all played a part in its accumulation and would have thus bore some of its consequences (Obnah, 1999).
The conduct of Santos introduces an element of honesty. He understood that the entire department was his responsibility and the laws that had been enacted were so because of his permission, in stead of apportioning blame to the uninterested politicians, he owns up and takes full responsibility and this comes as a surprise to all of the council people who thought the process would drag them into it and thus reduce their chances of ever being elected into the political positions that they had anticipated.
When he rose at the council hearing and said that he was solely responsible, Councilman Harrison is just as shocked as he is relieved, he sits back and asks no further questions a clear show of his relief. He later calls the office of the director to ask him out, an action that would only be translated as one of gratitude for the favors that had been done him.
The process of public administration is a complex one, when one gets appointed into such offices, there is a need for caution in the decision that one makes. The ramification of every undertaking must be considered and all other alternatives considered before settling on a course of action. It would also be prudent to involve all the stakeholders in the area of jurisdiction that one is called top serve. Had Santos considered effectively the consequences that his decisions would have maybe the department would not have made such big losses.
Accountability is yet another element that is of essence to the services of an appointed official. One must lay down proper methods of recording every single undertaking that the office engages in more so specifically should the undertaking involve the funds. Funds management requires an exhaustive monitoring system so that should the firm make loses, they would accurately reflect. This made the case a lot lighter for Santos. Had there been no effective way of monitoring the movements of the funds chances that he would have been accused of embezzling the funds were high.
Finally honesty is a key personality trait in public service (Tiegen & Hills, 1998). Should a fault result, all that one would do is just to own up that there was an error in the decision taken as it ended up resulting in loses. This makes the entire process of dispensation of justice a lot faster.
References
Brock, J. (2007). City Council Hearings in Orsan. OREWASH (A). Washington: University of Washington Press.
Kellner, D. (2010).New Technologies, Techno Cities. New York Times, 11(1), 3.
Obnah J. (1999). Bureaucracies in modern cities, Gale Readers, 10(2), 2-3.
Tiegen, D. and Hills, K. (1998). Novels for Students: presenting analysis, context and critsicm on commonly studied novels. Gale Readers, 11(3), 8.